Bachmann to seek 6th District seat despite redistricting

WASHINGTON — A state court panel has released the new congressional district lines, pairing up U.S. Reps. Betty McCollum and Michele Bachmann and leaving open the 6th District Bachmann has represented since 2007. Bachmann says she plans on seeking the 6th District seat anyway.

"For the last two weeks I’ve been letting it known to people that wherever the heart of the 6th District would be, that’s where I would be running for re-election," Bachmann told MinnPost. "What I wanted to do is make it unequivocally clear today that I am going to be seeking re-election in the 6th Congressional District."

All other congressional incumbents, including Republican Chip Cravaack, who represents liberal northern Minnesota but lives in the more conservative exurbs of Minneapolis, remain in their current districts.

The new map keeps the same basic design of the current one: one district for each Minneapolis and St. Paul, three suburban districts wrapping around the metropolitan area and three out-state districts, the southern 1st, the western 7th and the 8th, which extends from the Iron Range through Duluth down to Chisago County.

The McCollum-Bachmann pairing was pushed by the state DFL Party, which was anxious to see the conservative Bachmann run against the liberal McCollum in a district that is heavily Democratic. But Congress does not have residency requirements (you only need to live in the state you plan to represent in Congress, not the specific district), so with her 6th District still open, Bachmann said she will run there. She has not yet decided if she will move from Stillwater, now in the 4th District, to the 6th.

Republicans in the state Legislature had approved a redistricting plan that would have created an 8th District spanning the entire northern portion of the state, from Duluth in the east to the Red River Valley along the North Dakota border. Doing so would have created a strongly Democratic district represented by current 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson. The new seventh would have run along the middle portions of the state, and it would have been a more reliably conservative district for first-term incumbent Republican Cravaack, who lives in Chisago County. Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed the plan.

But the court panel charged with drawing the new lines rejected both the DFL and Republican maps, adapting “a least-change plan to the extent possible,” according to their ruling.

“Our adoption of a least-change congressional plan is consistent with the legal principles governing a judicially created redistricting plan and with the urgings of numerous citizens throughout Minnesota who participated in the public hearing-and­comment process,” they wrote.

Don't get too excited, Swift. That won't be happening. First, Bachmann would lose badly to McCollum. Second, Bachmann has said she'll run in the sixth CD. The people in that district don't/won't care where Bachmann lives, they'll vote for her.

Which is exactly why the DFL needs to ceed that ground and not waste money there.

She didn't represent the old 6th even when she lived in it as an Iowa girl. Why should not living in the new 6th change anything for her? Should she be elected she can continue to collect her fat salary and to die for health insurance without lifting a finger.

Faced with the opportunity to take on a big spending liberal and her America-hating agenda, Bachmann has turned tail and run. If you can't take on a Democratic Congressional Representative you surely are unqualified to be leader of the free world.

Why would Bachmann run in Minnesota. While pandering for votes, in her failed presidential run, in Iowa proclaimed she is an Iowan. With a record of zero accomplishments I guess that is what the sixth district wants and deserves. It is time to demand progress out of our politicians. I still have an indelible image of Bachmann hanging around the neck of George W. Bush, that most conservative of conservatives, from one of Bush's State of the Union Speeches. She stood by silently while Bush did his dirty deeds. It is once again time for her to be silent.

I live in Iowa, and most of us are exceedingly happy that Bachmann lives in Minnesota. I don't know where she got enough people to vote for her, but we want them to stay in Minnesota too. We have enough problems with Steve King in Iowa. the two of them here would be just too much.

She sent out a whiny little campaign fundraiser blaming the "liberal court" for being out to get her. Only one on the panel was appointed by a Democrat, but what do facts matter when you have the most professional victim on the planet!